


Outside Looking In

by rabidchild67



Category: White Collar
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Open Marriage, Pre-Slash, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-01-07 15:26:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1121475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidchild67/pseuds/rabidchild67
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter told Neal he was in love with him. Who wouldn’t want that?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Outside Looking In

**Author's Note:**

> For the purpose of this story, we'll just pretend Peter being a total douche canoe this season hasn't happened, shall we? Thanks.

Open relationships. Neal wasn’t sure what that meant, really. Not to him, anyway.

If anything, he was a serial monogamist – flitting from relationship to relationship with wild abandon when he was younger. Boys, girls, you name it – he was in love with being in love. 

All of that stopped when he met Kate, though. In her he thought he’d found the One, the person that completed him, his other half, and all that other happy horseshit you find in crappy rom coms. He’d loved her with everything he had, but in the end she’d left him wondering, wanting. 

She hadn’t felt the same, not really, and he knew that now.

Sara was a trial Adult Relationship, a consolation prize, and they both knew it. She was coming off of a broken engagement, he was still in mourning for what had never really been, and they’d had a really great time. He wasn’t sure what made him sadder when she’d left, the fact she really couldn’t marry him, or the acquisition of more might-have-beens.

He wanted the picket fence, he’d just never learned how to ask for it.

Peter and Elizabeth have it, and he’d be envious if the very idea of them hadn’t made him so damn happy, and what the hell was that? Sure, he was living vicariously through someone else – who didn’t sometimes? – but here was a couple who had _made it work,_ and he often feels almost protective of it.

Until…

“I know why you did it,” Peter says to him in a low voice. 

“I – what?”

Neal's mind is still reeling over the resolution of the whole Hagen nightmare. How had he skated, yet again? He doesn’t know. He isn’t sure he deserves it (he never is), but who is he to complain? Learning to keep his mouth shut was the first lesson he’d ever truly learned.

He looks down at Peter’s hand on his wrist as if he is watching a movie. 

“You love me,” Peter whispers.

Neal takes his hand away and shoves it in his pocket. “You’re my best friend,” he insists, and again he’s put hurt into Peter’s eyes when he doesn’t really want to.

Weeks pass. He tries to stay away from situations where he and Peter are alone, tries to keep busy, but that simple statement, _You love me,_ is like a song that’s gotten stuck in his head and just won’t quit. At first he denies that that was even what Peter meant – they’re friends, right? Bros. Then he remembers all the looks, the always being aware when Peter’s eyes were on him, looking to him because Peter’s is the first person in a long time whose good opinion of him matters, and he realizes he’s not so sure.

He really does have feelings for Peter.

That’s when he starts looking for ways for Moz to break the anklet.

“What? You’ve got six months left!” Moz protests. “Why now?”

“Because Moz,” he growls. “Because.”

Because he won’t be the person who comes between Peter and Elizabeth.

\----

“Don’t die, I love you, please don’t die,” Peter says, and Neal would laugh at him for saying something so ridiculous if his head didn’t hurt like a motherfucker. Why were there always guns, and why were they always being pointed at him? _He was a good person, dammit!_ In theory, anyway.

“Not dying,” Neal mutters when he can get his tongue free of the roof of his mouth, but goddamn it if he doesn’t pass out right away. 

\----

When he wakes, he’s aware he’s in the hospital and that someone is in the room with him almost before he’s even aware of himself. He knows with certainty that person is Peter.

“Why are you here?”

Hurt eyes again, and they’re making Neal angry for no reason other than the fact that he doesn’t deserve their regard at all. “Why? To be with you.”

“Don’t you have a wife to be with instead?”

“You were hurt.”

“I’m not anymore.”

“You need _some_ one.”

“Not you. Never you. Go home, Peter.”

That one hurts even him.

\----

Elizabeth is there the next time he wakes. “Fuck you,” she says.

“Good morning,” Neal replies.

“It’s 3:00 in the afternoon. Also, you’re an asshole.”

“I agree. Why this time?”

“You know why.”

He does. Doesn’t mean he won’t fight with her about it. “Did he tell you he told me he’s in love with me?”

“Of course – who do you think made him tell you?”

“What the fuck is wrong with you? He’s your husband.”

“And he’s got a big heart. Look, we’ve had an open marriage since before the day we said ‘I do.’ Not all relationships are quite so cookie-cutter, Neal.”

“Are we having this conversation? You’re saying you can share him? Just like that?”

His tone is snippy, and it riles her. She stands, waves her hands around. “No, not just like that, and not with just anyone. You would have sacrificed your life and your freedom for him, Neal, and that means something. Anyway, you talk as if I have no say here, no agency of my own. Fuck you again.”

“Fuck you too. Don’t _I_ have a say? I won’t be someone’s boy on the side!” Christ on a cracker, his head hurt.

She looks sad, though. “Is that really what you think this is?” she asks and then leaves him to stew.

\----

“Sorry I was such an asshole to you,” Neal says to Peter at the office the following week. It’s been a couple of days on the couch – the bullet only grazed his skull and he’s had a concussion – but Peter has frustratingly heeded Neal's request for once and actually fucked off.

“You were an asshole? Hadn’t noticed.”

He supposes he deserved that. “El tell you about our conversation?” he asks as if there haven’t been several days since it happened. But he’s relived it so much in his head it feels like it was just a minute ago.

“Is that what you think – that you’re just some little bit of strange I’m after?” Peter actually looks affronted.

“What else am I supposed to think?”

“I told you I loved you.”

“You say that as if it fixes something.”

“Can’t it? I want you in my life.”

“And I want you in mine, but not like this. I don’t think I can be content with only half of you, do you understand?”

“Can’t you at least try?”

He wants to, man does he want to. But he’s not wired that way, and the fact it takes him until this moment to realize it is really fucking incredible timing.

“I want the picket fence,” he says simply, and turns away.

But Peter comes after him, lays a hand on his arm. “Ours in Brooklyn is wrought iron – does that count?” he asks, eyes all hopeful and Neal can’t handle it.

Maybe it does.

But he still leaves anyway.

\----

Thank you for your time.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Tacenda](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1557002) by [Turtlebaby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turtlebaby/pseuds/Turtlebaby)




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